catapult magazine

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discussion

Vanilla Sky

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Dave
Aug 25 2003
12:35 pm

Anybody seen this movie? I’d love to hear some people sound off re: themes, soundtrack, etc. I loved it, from the opening Radiohead tunes to the crazy plot twists along the way. The original version from Spain “Abre Los Ojos” got big votes at Sundance, but didn’t deal with right/wrong and the idea that Cruise is paying for his mistake and living in a hell that his mind had created. That added alot to the film in my opinion and appealed more to American audiences. Is the idea of choices and consequences not palatable to European audiences?

The other American addition was the dimension of his corporate life. This was completely ignored in the Spanish version. Not a big surprise, I guess.

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Andrew
Aug 27 2003
05:35 am

Personally, I hated it. I really don’t like “it was all a dream” endings or any variations thereof, so needless to say, I wasn’t impressed with the ending of Vanilla Sky (or Abre Los Ojos, for that matter). I just thought it was a cop-out—first you put tons of crazy crap in the movie, then explain it all away by saying it was a “lucid dream.”

And plus, after seeing Abre Los Ojos, I’ve lost a lot of respect for Cameron Crowe. He didn’t do anything creative with the remake, in fact, certain key scenes seemed to be shot-by-shot duplicates.

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grant
Sep 25 2003
06:28 am

Yeah, I think I remember reading that Crowe made intentional duplicates. Even though I agree that, as a story, ending things with “it was all just a dream” can be cheap, I thought it was merited with this film. And I thought Crowe brought alot to this film because of his wide knowledge of the pop culture entertainment that has become our American dream. I remember thinking lots about the implications of the final scenes of this film, not in terms of the story, but in terms of the idea that American entertainment: albums, songs, video images, television moments, etc. are stored away in our subconscious and are an integral part of us. Only Crowe could put something like that together. I was haunted by it when I saw it, which was quite a while ago now.